The Macalope Daily: Who would Steve Jobs fire?

We may have reached peak self-parody with the "What would Steve Jobs have done?" posts, readers. The Macalope's just not sure where we go from Rocco Pendola writing for Forbes: "If Steve Jobs Were Alive, He Would Fire Tim Cook" (no link because enough is enough, Forbes, but tip o' the antlers to Daring Fireball).

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We may have reached peak self-parody with the "What would Steve Jobs have done?" posts, readers. The Macalope's just not sure where we go from Rocco Pendola writing for Forbes: "If Steve Jobs Were Alive, He Would Fire Tim Cook" (no link because enough is enough, Forbes, but tip o' the antlers to Daring Fireball).

Pendola, who seems like a perfectly nice guy on Twitter, apparently can't help himself. Who knows what personal demons possess someone to write something with the force of 10,000 asses that are backwards? Let us all take a moment to be thankful we are not ourselves possessed by such ill humors of the mind.

Projection is not just a river in Egypt, Rocco. It's actually not a river anywhere, so far as the Macalope knows, but it is a condition, and you've got it bad.

I have been using Apple's Maps app on my iPhone 5. While it was certainly a mistake to release an unrefined product to replace the solid Google (GOOG) Maps, it's not that bad.

Ah, the old "Just wait for the other shoe!" game! Why is it the other shoe is always a smelly, worn out cross-trainer?

I view Apple the same way I do pizza and sex. There's no such thing as a bad Apple product.

No bad Apple products, but fire the CEO. Makes sense.

Steve Jobs set the bar so ridiculously high that it's almost unfair to criticize what happens on Cook's watch.

No! It's not! Just criticize him rationally! Is that too much to ask?

I observe Apple fanboys and fangirls with pity as they defend Tim Cook. He is the kind of guy Jobs would have fired.

Thus answering the question "What did Rocco Pendola have for breakfast this morning?" Answer: a heaping bowl of Kellogg's Crazy Flakes.

This isn't the first time Pendola has gone off on Tim Cook. But this time he goes off the deep end. And through the bottom of the pool. And the Earth's crust.

And, yes, I know that Jobs hired him.

But his performance over the last year has been so atrocious he would now fire him. Because a stock jockey with really nice hair says so.

But, you ride an incredibly slippery slope when you use these facts to argue that (A) Jobs would not be furious right now...

No. Stop. The point is not to argue that Steve Jobs would not be furious. The point is it doesn't matter what Steve Jobs would want. The man is dead. What he would want is, sadly, academic. The fact that the people who seem most concerned about what Steve Jobs would do are the ones who never understood him when he was alive would be amusing if these exercises weren't so offensive.

...(B) The above-mentioned details exonerate Cook from real consequences for the types of horrendous missteps Jobs never would have made...

It's hard to believe we're still doing this. Must the Macalope trot out MobileMe again? Must he point out that Jobs was aware of everything Apple had planned for the past year, if not longer?

...and (C) There's no difference between how Cook errs and responds to mistakes and how Jobs did.

Of course there's a difference. To say that Jobs's response is the only right way, however, is ridiculous. The man is dead. To run around trying to emulate him is pointless and expressly against his last wishes. Yet that's exactly what Pendola thinks Cook should do.

I think I have a decent way with words, however, I cannot find any even close to appropriate to illustrate how flabbergasted I am right now.

That makes two of us.

If Jobs was alive and just slid into a Chairman or Director role, Cook would have been writing his resignation letter, not a sappy apology on Friday.

So, we now have people criticizing the apology for being a non-apology and people criticizing it for being sappy. If we could only get them into a room and have them fight it out.

The recovery process is what matters. Cook butchered this one.

Actually, what matters is iPhone sales. Which, you know, aren't so bad.

Ultimately, this is an incredibly sad story.

Jobs's death is sad. Apple's performance since then is actually quite good.

But what's also sad is people dragging out Jobs's name to try to bash Apple over the head. Criticize the company if you want, but doing it in Steve Jobs's name is a lazy way of justifying your lousy analysis of Apple. It's an unseemly and now tired technique. Knock it off already.

[Editors' Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]